


Far From the Madding Crowd

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always a storm inside Sherlock's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far From the Madding Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://halloa-what-is-this.tumblr.com/post/48044404185/) as a birthday present.
> 
> Russian translation available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12520680).

He reads T. S. Eliot in bed before he falls asleep. He lays the book on the bedside table and settles down, his arms behind his head, his elbow poking my thigh. I lower my book, some play my mother got me for Christmas. He turns his head, stretches his neck in his slumber. There is a whiff of air in which I smell his shampoo and skin. Like clean cotton sheets drying on a string outside in the winter. I kiss his cheek. His shampoo is cucumber, but his skin is cinnamon, tiny drops of it scattered on his shoulders. He smiles and looks up at me. He won’t remember this in the morning, but I tell him what he tastes like and he sniggers.

*

We leave Baker Street and go to the city. To see other people, he says. I wrinkle my nose, and he smiles and leads me through the masses that make me feel ill at ease, sometimes so bad I want to throw up. I remember all the times he has followed me through the crowds, forced to hurry his steps in order to keep up. My legs are longer than his by several centimetres, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys our differences, likes it that he has to stand on tiptoe or that I have to crouch so our foreheads can touch. We balance each other out. If he knew anything about Chinese belief and symbols, he’d say we’re yin and yang, something I’ve known since he walked in. But he knows his Hardy, and I should ask him about the one I remember now that we are back home, if it lives up to its name.  _Far from the Madding Crowd._  That’s how I feel every time it’s just me and him, away from the buzzing of glorious London filled with ordinary people and their mind-gutters.

*

They look at us on the street like they know us, like they’re free to judge, free to stare. Because we’re famous, that’s what they say. He only hums and takes my finger to keep me on my feet, just the one finger, like a child clinging to the parent’s thumb with his whole hand. That’s how he holds me sometimes, when I most need it. By one finger, by the belt of my dressing gown, by the sleeve of my coat, by a strand of hair. That’s more contact than I allow anyone else, except maybe Mrs Hudson. Once she was the only one who would embrace me, kiss me, caress my back when I left in the middle of the night to do what I do, silent plea in her voice.  _Be safe._  He never says it, because he’s always next to me to make sure I do.

*

I come in from a storm raging outside and am left with the storm brewing inside my head. My hair soaked and my clothes glued to the skin I feel like I’ll go mad with all the noises. Water dropping on the floor arouses him from the chair where he’s been sitting and waiting since I left. He takes the dripping coat and gets me a towel for my hair. He’s never lost for words with me but he doesn’t say anything now. It’s wonderful how it’s all in his presence, somehow the words are written in his muscles and he transforms them into movement, into gestures and touches, and suddenly it’s all quiet again.

*

“You are perfect.”


End file.
